The U.S. MBA Programs Favored By International Students
Maria |
February 1, 2025

In this episode of Business Casual, John Byrne, alongside Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, delves into the shifting dynamics of international enrollments at top U.S. MBA programs. They explore the intricate balance between domestic and international student ratios, influenced by factors like domestic applicant trends and political climates, notably the Trump administration’s impact. Georgetown, Washington Foster, and Columbia Business School are highlighted for their significant, albeit declining, international cohorts.

The analysis reflects broader trends in global business education, emphasizing the need for diversity in academic environments to enrich learning and mirror the global business landscape. Schools are adapting to fluctuating international interest, which is reshaping their recruitment strategies and potentially the future landscape of MBA education in the U.S.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:06.960] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich-Vila. We, every year, take a look at those class profiles that come out from all the top schools in the world, and we do our little analysis on them. And this past week, we’ve taken a look at international enrollments at the top US schools. And there’s some really interesting data here. We identify the US MBA programs with the largest number of international students, and those that have gone up, and those who have gone down. Traditionally, in the US, many of the top schools aim to have about a third of their student body from outside the US for the purposes of diversity and to give different perspectives in the classroom. But those old rules have been thrown out a lot because there have been consecutive years of domestic applicant decline. And So many schools have become more reliant on international MBA students. And then you have, of course, the Trump factor, which did impact, we believe, the 2024 incoming classes because it was clear that he was running and there was some concern over whether or not he would be reelected, and of course, he has been.

[00:01:33.870] – John

We expect to see a more significant decline in this coming year. But I want to just give you a sense of what we found. The schools with the largest international cohorts are Georgetown. This last fall, fall of 2024, 49% of the students at Georgetown in the MBA program came from outside the United States. That is down 10 points, incidentally. At Washington Foster, it’s 46%, also down 10 points. At Columbia Business School in New York, it’s 46% as well, down only one point. At Indiana Kelly, it’s 46 as well, down from 58%, so that’s a 12-point decline in one year. I think you’re getting the trend line here, which is essentially fewer international applicants and students, because I think that in many cases, these enrolled numbers are indicative of the applicant pool. There are a few schools that went up. Unc Kenan–Flagler went from 34% in ’23 to 43%, Washington Olin went down 51 to 44. Michigan Ross, pretty much steady, 43 and 23, 44 and 24. Caroline, you’re our international expert. What do you make of these numbers? And what did they tell you about the state of business education education in America?

[00:03:01.360] – Caroline

Well, there’s always going to be some fluctuation in these numbers. As you said, it’s a function of the application pool, and there’s always going to be a cycle of different factors, international applications, domestic applications, how the economies are doing in different countries, and what that means for the number of people applying to business school and who feel confident about coming to the US and confident about leaving their jobs and going abroad, potentially. I think it also reflects the domestic rebound, so an increase in applications from domestic applicants, and so schools not being as reliant as they may have been in some past years on the international application pool. So I think that schools won’t be too concerned about these numbers because I think it’s probably as much a factor of an increase domestically in candidates coming through rather than a decline internationally. But there probably is some fall off internationally. And I think that with Trump running as President, there was concern about the implications for candidates coming to the US who might feel that they may be coming to a less welcoming environment. We certainly saw that having an impact last time around under the Trump presidency.

[00:04:25.050] – Caroline

And then, of course, concerns about visas. And if candidates are coming from overseas study in the US. For many of them, it’s a tremendous investment. It’s very costly to do an MBA in the US, even if you’re a domestic student and earning a salary in the US. Most of these programs were looking at a full-time two-year programs. It’s a huge investment. If you’re coming from India or Latin America or Africa, many other countries, your earning capacity is not the same as someone coming from US or perhaps someone coming from Western Europe. And so it can be quite an intimidating prospect, and you got to have a lot of confidence in your ability to get a return on investment as well as access to financing, of course. And perhaps fewer candidates have confidence that they will get that return or they will have a guaranteed return if they’re not sure that their ability to stay in the US post MBA is guaranteed. Because although I don’t know. I think an increasing number of students do have great opportunities in their home countries, right? And we’ve seen more MBA graduates going back to India, for example, rather than staying in the US or staying in Europe post-MBA because of the increase in great opportunities there, still many of these students are looking to make a career move internationally post-MBA.

[00:05:55.920] – Caroline

And so if they feel that they don’t have complete confidence in their to do that, then they may be less inclined to apply in the first place.

[00:06:04.100] – John

Yeah, exactly. In our sample, across 29 top schools, 21 saw declines between 23 and 24, five of them by double digits. The rest, I guess, eight had increases, generally fairly slight. Maria, can you really get a true global education in America?

[00:06:25.590] – Maria

I don’t know that any American school would provide as global of an education as as the INSEADs of the world or the other programs, mostly in Europe, where, say, 90% of the student body is from another country that is not the home country. But that having been said, American business schools seek out and enroll international students for a reason. There’s definitely a big benefit to having various perspectives from various markets across the world in your classroom. While I will acknowledge that I think that the INSEADs of the world probably do a better job of being purely international, I think the US schools have a nice balance of bringing in those international voices from some of the world’s largest economy, some of the world’s perhaps smaller but faster-growing economies, some of the world’s struggling economies. I think they do get a really good mix of voices into the classroom. I do think that you can learn quite a bit about international markets by attending a US business school. I also think that many of the students who come from overseas, I believe that they may be coming to the US to learn about the American capitalist business system.

[00:07:43.920] – Maria

If part of the goal for them is to learn more about American culture and American management practice and all the different ways that America does things, it may have flaws, but it still is a very strong system, there there is a benefit to the international students to coming not only to be immersed in the US in terms of living here, but also in being in a classroom where there are at least as many American students, if not sometimes a two-third to one-third approximate ratio.

[00:08:14.670] – John

True. Caroline, do you think there’s a tipping point? In other words, an ideal percentage of international students to have in a US classroom, what do you think it would be?

[00:08:23.190] – Caroline

Well, I think that’s hard to judge, but if you look at the numbers, it does seem that schools have a target of roughly somewhere between 30 and 40 %. That seems to be the number that they return to after some blips here and there. But that seems to be where they are the most common average of international students. And so that suggests that they find that they want to keep internationals as a minority in the classroom for the reasons, no doubt, that Maria said that they want it to be It’s primarily a US-focused experience because the domestic applicants are most likely staying in the US post-MBA. And so whilst it’s useful for them to get some international perspective, that doesn’t need to be the core of what they’re learning. And the international candidates are likely planning to stay in the US post-MBA as well. And therefore, they are looking for more of an immersive experience rather than a purely international experience. So I suspect that that’s what they’re aiming for. What I’ve also heard is that schools can sometimes get pushback from alumni if they have too large a percentage of international students. And alumni start to get concerned that it will impact the alumni community in the US if there’s 50 % international students, and therefore people might be eventually leaving the US, that could dilute the impact of the alumni network in the US.

[00:09:59.480] – Caroline

So I’ve heard that there has been pushback in the past about that. It does look for the numbers. They’re targeting roughly a third of the class as that magic number.

[00:10:12.050] – John

Yeah. In the big three, Wharton is at 31 Harvard at 35, and Stanford at the high end of the big three at 39. Then of the M7 schools, I think the schools that have the greatest international representation would be Columbia. That makes sense because New York is a magnet. It’s 46% at Columbia. At MIT, it’s 40%. Those are the numbers at the really elitist schools, put it that way. Then actually, at some of the secondary schools, you have higher numbers of percentages of international students, I think in part because they probably can draw higher quality international students than maybe even domestics if if you’re not in the top 20, let’s say, which is an interesting part of the composition of these different classes. Now, we said that in Europe, you can get a truly global education because 90%, if not more, of the students in most European business MBA programs are going to be from outside the given country. That makes for a very different learning experience. It’s not only very multicultural, but because there’s no center, meaning you go to an INSEAD and really, even though the main campus is in France with another campus in Singapore for MBAs, the location means, in my mind, much less than it would in the school where the cohort is dominated by domestic students.

[00:11:57.550] – John

Would you say that’s true, Caroline?

[00:11:59.460] – Caroline

Yeah, it’s It’s a very different experience. It’s a very different learning experience. So as you said, at schools like in Seattle, on a business school, the other top international programs in Europe, they’ve always sought to craft a class of people from very different countries, backgrounds, so that diversity has always been a core part of these MBA programs. And over time, 20, 30 years ago, that diversity was more European dominated, and And now it is much more global than it used to be. And it does create a magic in the classroom when you have people from such very different cultures and such incredibly different life experiences and professional experiences. And so that’s a huge part of what draws people to those schools and what you will learn in that classroom. You will learn so much about the challenges of working across borders, different cultural practices, the challenges of working in international teams. I mean, you will experience that because you will be working in teams with people from very different backgrounds. And you might think that because someone has gone to INSEAD and people have something in common, if they’re heading off to business school. They are bright young professionals, very motivated, very ambitious, etc.

[00:13:22.050] – Caroline

Yet you get some terrible culture clashes in those teams. And every year there are people knocking at the door of the program management team saying, I just, you have to change my team. I cannot work with these people anymore. I’m sorry. I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. Happens every single class, and they always say, no, sorry, you’ve just got to make it work. That’s part of the learning experience, and they have to get through it however painful it is. And it often is painful, right? It is extraordinary how people from such different backgrounds, even though they have come to the same in place and therefore have different things, have some things in common, how differently they can see things and how differently they might tackle a problem or even how their expectations about it, how a team will work together can be very different. So that’s definitely a key part of what MBA students will take away from an experience at a school like that. And that is very relevant if you are internationally mobile, if you are targeting a career where you will likely work outside of your home country or work in a very global organization where you be working with international teams, that’s incredibly valuable.

[00:14:38.100] – Caroline

And recruiters recognize that. Recruiters come to schools like that to recruit for multiple offices around the world. They’re not just recruiting for Europe or for London or for a short list of offices. They’re typically recruiting for many offices around the world because they know that they can parachute in a graduate from one of these top international programs pretty much into any country, and they can be successful. Of course, there can be language challenges. If you don’t speak the local language in many countries, it It’s going to be difficult to get a job. But there are many countries where you can go and work with where the primary language will be English. Of course, many of these schools as well, people do have language skills beyond English, because if they are not native English speakers by definition, they are bilingual, and then many people have a third language as well. So many people are able to function effectively in business in a language that is not their first language.

[00:15:45.070] – John

Now, Maria, I’m thinking, okay, I’m a fire breathing capitalist, and if I go to a US school, I’m going to find more fire breathing capitalists who want to make real money and have a real impact. There are a lot of international students who may disagree that purpose of business is to make a lot of money and may actually be more inclined to think that business has responsibilities to society, to its customers, to its suppliers, to its employees, which, let’s face it, isn’t Business schools in the US primarily taught the shareholder model of governance for many years. They have broadened that to the so-called stakeholder model. But nonetheless, I’m going to just bet that the more US students in the classroom, you’ll have more fire breathing capitalists. It may be a little uncomfortable to hear people say, Oh, well, business doesn’t have to make a profit. It just has to make enough money to pay its employees because the responsibilities that business have go far beyond the responsibilities to the owner to return money on their investment. What do you think, Maria? Am I going to have big fights in Europe that I won’t have in the US?

[00:16:55.910] – Maria

I mean, I didn’t go to business school in Europe. I don’t That’s an interesting theory because I think one could also argue that the people who believe that their country’s less capitalistic, for lack of a better term, if they believe that the less capitalistic model is the right way to go, then they probably aren’t seeking an MBA in the US. Many of my international classmates… I mean, one of my classmates from HBS was named to Forbes list of top venture capitalists, private equity investors in China a few months ago. Presumably, I don’t want to speak for her, but presumably she came to the US to learn how to become a very good investor, and she has succeeded massively. I do think that some of the cultural differences may revolve around what is the role of capitalism? Should shareholder value reign supreme or should there be more of a triple bottom line? I also think, though, that the international students are often coming from markets in which government intervention looks a lot different than in the US. I think that they be coming from markets where there are many more constraints around everything from the ingredients they use in their cosmetics and food to the import tariff situation and protectionist policies.

[00:18:12.140] – Maria

I do think that there sometimes are some cultural differences, but I also think some of those differences in mindset come from operating in a country where the government plays a much more active role in regulating business. This is a great question because right now, I’m immediately going to hang up and I’m going to call my husband and be like, What do you think about this? What did you experience at HP? Because my mind is racing right now as I try to think through the international students. I don’t know because there were many domestic applicants who were very social enterprise-oriented, who have gone on to stay in the social enterprise space. I don’t necessarily know. Oh, yeah. Then I have another Japanese classmate who went to work for a hedge fund. I don’t necessarily know that it’s cultural per se. I think that maybe someone’s professional background has more to do with it. I can’t help but wonder if the people who might come from these more altruistic countries, perhaps they intentionally seek a US MBA because they want to experience that different because in their hearts, they are a little bit more capitalistic, so to speak.

[00:19:19.840] – Maria

That’s the experience they’re looking for. That’s the education they’re looking for, and that’s why they come to the United States. Very thought-provoking question. Thanks, John.

[00:19:28.660] – John

I remember in the years I lived in London when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister, her critics were saying, We don’t want America’s jungle capitalism in our country, the survival of the fittest mentality where we don’t take care of our citizens in terms of health care, our social safety net has been greatly diminished over the years and will continue to be under this new administration, unlike many European countries where you have a lot of vacation time, much more balanced with your family and your friends, your health care is pretty much taken care of. The state embraces you as opposed to rejects you. It’s a very different culture and attitude. I think if I were an American going to a French school, for example, I might collide. My capitalist views may collide greatly with these more… How would I put it? The gentle capitalist views of my last mates. Caroline, you had that experience, although I see you as a fire breathing capitalist.

[00:20:35.940] – Caroline

Absolutely. You definitely get a huge diversity of perspectives at the international schools. And so I don’t think you’re going to have a dominance of perspective that American capitalism is bad and European more social capitalistic approach is letter, you’re just going to have very different perspectives. And I can remember it, it’s yet, some of the most right wing, rabid capitalists were the finance professors. And they were working at an international school. And so there is definitely a diversity of perspective amongst the students and the faculty. And I think that enriches the experience and the debate for everyone. You have some very interesting debates as a result. Themselves. But I mean, what is different at the international schools, I think, and I’ve heard the professors talk about this as well, is that professors who have taught at both US schools and a school like in Seattle, London Business School, is that in the US schools, you tend to have a more common way of thinking, and that is no doubt driven by the fact that vast majority of people are coming from US culture. And even many of the international students, we talked about they have 30, 40% international Some of those will have also been working in the US before they go to business school, so they are not necessarily coming from a completely different mindset.

[00:22:08.550] – Caroline

In an international classroom like INSEAD, it can be much more challenging for professors to manage that debate and discussion because there is less likely to be a groupthink perspective where you are just going to have a wide variety of perspectives and opinions and very opinionated people with very different takes on different situations. That is going to just come up more frequently, inevitably, in an international classroom than it is in a US business school classroom.

[00:22:45.750] – John

True. I also think with the re-election of Trump, we’ve doubled down on jungle capitalism. I mean, all you had to do is look at his inauguration and all the tech pros behind him getting better seats than the Supreme Court justices, than senators and congressmen or even former presidents. If you want to think about the big guerrilla of capitalism, it’s Elon. He is a guerrilla, and he behaves like a guerrilla, and he was there full regalia. We’re doubling down on jungle capitalism. Although I can bet you those tech pros will be looking for handouts from the government in terms of less regulation and more government funding for this or that. Sure enough, I think today the news is that Trump is putting $500 billion into AI, and all these companies are very eager to have their hand out to get a piece of it. So much for all that. Anyway, we think, obviously, international students greatly enhance the learning experience. Today, in any real corporate job, they’re going to have great exposure to different countries and different cultures and the different people in them, and you’re going to have to work with them effectively. Schools that are devoted to that and using that expertise in the classroom are going to give you a better MBA education than those that don’t.

[00:24:11.910] – John

There you have it. Take a look at our story. It’s called the Top US MBA programs with the Most International Students. Meantime, we’ll see you next week. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The U.S. MBA Programs Favored By International Students
Maria |
February 1, 2025

Full Episode Transcript:

John Byrne: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast. We want to talk about international students. Schools are now reporting that a good number of their international recruits who were admitted to programs this fall haven’t been able to show up or have changed their mind.

At the University of Illinois, the school, the Gies College of Businesses, lost about 200 international students in its Master of Finance and Master of Business Analytics programs causing a $7 million hit. To their budget at UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 40 students didn’t show up who were admitted, and that’s resulting in two and a half to $3 million hit on their budget this year.

Both of these things have occurred before the announcement of a hundred thousand dollars tax on H one B Visa. Which will make it more difficult for many employers [00:01:00] to hire international students and keep them in the US for an extended period of time. And we’re getting the new class reports of the, of the new cohorts of students who’ve arrived on campus in the fall of this year.

And Carnegie Mellon is. Down 30% for their international cohort over the past two years. UCLA Anderson School is down 25% over the past two years, and schools are preparing for the worst because of the H one B Visa decision which could affect future employment. Caroline and Maria, my cohosts are in the market helping people get into the best schools in the world.

And Caroline, what do you think?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yeah, definitely seeing concern among international candidates and people holding off on applying for the US schools. So it’s really a shame. I think the international schools, particularly the schools like Inea and London Business School and the other top.[00:02:00]

International European programs will benefit, they’ll get talent that might otherwise have come to the us, which is great for those schools. And I’m very fond of those schools, but it is sad as from the US perspective for sure. On the other hand, you could also take the perspective that.

If you do have options for your career post MBA that don’t require that you absolutely have to stay in the US as an international candidate, then now could be a very good time to apply, right? Because definitely application volume will be down and schools will be perhaps. More open to candidates that might otherwise have been waitlisted or rejected in the past.

For some candidates, this is actually a fantastic opportunity to get into a top school, but from, for, at least from the school’s perspective, it is a shame because, I’ve experienced firsthand the value of a very internationally diverse classroom and the value that brings with a [00:03:00] diversity of perspectives that enriches the learning experience so much for everybody.

Enriches the debate and bring so much to the academic experience as well as the the network and the social experience. So it’s everybody’s loss, right?

John Byrne: Very true.

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: And I think it’s a very myopic perspective that the US government takes that. There needs to be a more of a refocus at US educational institutions on the domestic market because those international applicants bring a lot to the domestic students in enriching their learning and enriching their network.

Of course bring a huge value to the US economy when they stay. So there are very impressive statistics on the value of immigrants to the US economy. So Indian immigrants, for example, are only about one and a half percent of the US population, but they have founded to date about 8% of all the tech startups in the us.[00:04:00]

And for sure some of that top talent from India will now not come to the us. They will go to perhaps they will stay at the great schools that we’ve talked about in India, or they will go to other international schools. So for sure it will be a loss to the us learning experience and to the US economy.

John Byrne: Maria, you run applicant lab which is a platform that helps applicants get into highly selective schools. And many of the people who use your product are international students. What are you seeing?

Maria Wich-Vila: Everything Caroline is saying concern is think a delicate way to put it.

And I think it’s because as the more affordable provider in the market, I tend to get the applicants who maybe they don’t have the family business to fall back on. Maybe they don’t have, large sources of income elsewhere in their lives. And so I think the concern is very real and very merited, right?

I can’t. In good faith, tell someone, if they [00:05:00] really start, sit down and do the math and start to do, run the numbers, if they just assume that things are going to stay as is. And this is the big caveat that I’m, I want to get to in a second, but if we assume that things stay as is and if someone really is from a lower income tier from Nepal or India or some of the other countries that I work with, yeah, maybe sit down and do that math and think about, okay, if I do have to come back to Nepal afterwards, how will I pay back that loan? There, there is though some good news. Even if we assume that things stay status quo, which I hope, and I’m pretty, I’m I think it’s, I’m cautiously optimistic that they won’t.

But there are other markets as well. So I’ve had a lot of candidates, or former clients, I should say, graduate from business school, not be able to get jobs in certain in countries and then. Being able to move to Dubai. Dubai for some reason, has started attracting a ton of candidates, primarily from South Asia but from other parts of the world who might be having trouble getting some of those work permits.

You could do worse than live in, Dubai’s not perfect, but [00:06:00] you could also do worse than live in Dubai, right? The salaries are pretty high. The standard of living, if you have a white collar job there is, it’s not the worst outcome. So it’s not I can’t stay in the us. That’s it.

There’s no other it’s not a binary of, it’s either the US or it’s nothing. And then I think the second point is I, we’ve just seen. So many things, let’s take something from a different facet of policy. The tariffs, right? The tariffs were announced and the markets went crazy, and in the months that have followed, oh, actually, here’s the tariff, but this one company, their products aren’t gonna be subject to the tariff.

And then there’s this other company that maybe they’re not gonna have to pay the same tariff. And I can’t help but wonder if some of these. Some of these very large companies that are getting tariff exemptions, their ability to lobby for. The H one B, maybe lowering of the H one B fee. If they’ve been able to successfully lobby tariffs, they might be success, able to successfully lobby against these, true, these [00:07:00] visa fees.

And a lot of these big companies, these big tech companies are in fact some of the largest employers of post MBA talent in the us. So I am cautiously optimistic that. This could be, hopefully right now it’s the big, the flash and storm and the, the making, the big splash, right?

Everything’s about showmanship and making the big splash. And maybe in the aftermath of the storm, that initial PR media storm, maybe the reality will start to calm down a little bit. Yeah, the other good news is that if you’re applying now, that means you would enroll in 2026. You would, if it, if you’re talking about the US two year program, you would graduate in 2028.

At that point, who knows what might happen. I like to think that what we have seen so far in terms of the Visa policies, hopefully. Roughly the floor about as bad as it can get. I think if they start implementing a similar thing to OPT, that could be the same thing. But if we just assume that okay, right now what’s been announced is that these foreign students all have to do, you can’t stay here, you have to [00:08:00] go someplace else.

It, we assume that’s like the initial negotiating position. It’s just gonna chip, it’s just gonna get, it’s got nowhere else to go. It’s even worse. So we’ve, we now have two and a half years roughly until. People applying now would have to really implement, or be really affected by this in a.

In a pragmatic and tangible way. And so that’s why I’m hoping that the little chipping away and the chipping away things will start to get a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better like we’ve seen with other facets of policy. Didn’t like a bunch of the CDC employees that were all fired under Doge didn’t more than half of them I think were recently rehired.

Yes. Back again true. Whatever you think of the policy, it seems like some of the policies are. Being slowly walked back. And so I think if you. If you’ve got an adventurous spirit, I, and by the way, if you apply now, sorry. I know I keep going, but I like, if you apply now, let’s say you get accepted, you don’t have to show up until August of 2026.

So that will give you [00:09:00] time, like definitely. Apply now and see what happens between now and August of 2026 to make the decision to not apply now, because you’re rightfully scared. I’m not blaming anyone, but to not apply now, maybe by maybe six months from now he’ll be like, ha, just kidding. I’m doubling the number of H one Bs.

Yeah, we have no idea what’s gonna happen. So things are So give yourself that optionality.

John Byrne: Yeah. And things are so uncertain that could very well happen because, one day at tariffs are on one country the next day they’re not one day they’re pausing the ab the interviews for student visas, the.

Say they’re not there’s litigation all over the place, challenging many of the presidential actions that have been taken that have put them in limbo despite all the headlines. So it’s, it, there’s more uncertainty than there is certainty about any of these things. And as you point out, you, if you [00:10:00] did apply this year, the odds are gonna be in your favor if you’re an international student, frankly, because there is no question.

That international applicant volume will be down at all the top schools in the us, which means that to maintain some semblance of a global class. Admission directors are going to have to dig a little bit deeper into their international applicant pools to select candidates. In a way, if you play the long term and in the BA, in, in many graduate degrees or long term bet, I think you’re gonna be.

Oddly better off. And it may even be that the schools will really even go out of their way to help international students in ways that they haven’t in the past because of these actions in Washington. And what do I mean by that? Just a more welcoming reception than the already welcoming reception you would get hiring immigration lawyers and people that can help you.

If in fact there is a [00:11:00] challenge of one kind or another. I think the takeaway is not to be discouraged and throw up your hands to say, ah, I always dreamed of coming to the United States and getting an MBA or a graduate degree in business. Use this as an opportunity to actually increase your odds of getting into a better school with the understanding that when you get out there, probably most likely be an administration change and a change in these policies if they even get completely adopted as Maria points out.

Wouldn’t you think that’s the best strategy, Caroline?

Caroline Diarte-Edwards: Yes, I agree. I think that it’s good to take a longer term perspective because it is such a long timeline, right? If you’re applying to a top two year program as you say, you’re gonna be coming out of the program at the end of the Trump presidency and things may look very different.

And Maria rightly points out that. Everything is very volatile, right? So one thing gets announced and the next week it [00:12:00] gets rolled back, right? They’ve done so many things where they’ve realized, oh, actually that was a really bad idea after all. So

They’ve changed things. So things may not it might, may not turn out to be as bad as we fear.

And then I would also encourage candidates. To apply to the US schools, but why not hedge your bets and apply to an international program as well? Agreed in a time of uncertainty. As Maria said, create options for yourself. And so I would encourage candidates to apply to the top US programs, but also apply to top international programs as well and see what offers you get.

And then you can make a decision. As Maria said, it will be closer to the time when you would be starting the program and there may be more clarity about the situation in the US and what your options are in international markets as well. So I think that given the current circumstances, a good strategy is to hedge your bets and apply more widely than you might [00:13:00] have otherwise done.

John Byrne: Plan Bs are good. Let me just say business schools in the US have for years advised international students that those should have a plan B in the event that they can’t get with a US company. The other thing to, to keep in mind incidentally, in terms of MBA employment is that most of the companies.

That basically employ the lion’s share of MBAs are all global concerns. So you can be hired here and if there’s any challenge in getting you employed here in the us you can simply start in an office outside the United States with a hope of coming back when things clear up. So that is also another important thing to keep in mind.

And I’ll just say this. Despite whatever messaging you’re reading in your local newspapers or on your streaming platforms or television stations about how immigrants may not be welcome in the us that’s not true at all. Universities are diverse places. Welcoming. [00:14:00] Embracing loving the diversity of their students and particularly those from different cultures and backgrounds that enrich the educational experience.

There is no Dean that I’ve ever encountered who said they want fewer international students. It’s the exact opposite. They’re putting out message after message, telling people that they’re still welcome and wanted. Needed in the classroom. Now, Maria, in the past we’ve seen applicants who try to say, okay, can I time my application and my enrollment in a program to what I think might be the next recession?

And we know that in recessions applications go way. In part because some people lose the opportunity to gain advancement in a recession. Some people get unemployed. Some people just realize, hey, a recession is a good time to take a time out and get a new educational credential, which may allow me to do things I otherwise can’t do.[00:15:00]

But it’s almost impossible to time a recession and I’m imagining it’s impossible to time what’s going on here now.

Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah. I mean if we could all time, when everyone’s been talking about a stock market crash that to, not to bring another disparate topic in, but like everyone’s been talking about, it’s a bubble.

It’s a bubble. I’ve been hearing ’cause a bubble for a year and a half. True. Yeah, you can’t time or ask, for example, ask the people who enrolled in business school, like who got into business school in 2020. Like there’s always gonna be these external shocks. We can try to predict a recession, but who knows if it’s going to happen?

Who knows if there’s going to be some sort of virus or the opposite of a virus. Maybe there’ll be a virus that helps us all live healthily forever. Who knows? There’s so much uncertainty out there that who knows what to do. So I think. I think yeah, have that optionality. I think go ahead and apply.

Now if there is a recession though, which everyone seems to think is coming at some point, at that point, it’s going to be harder to get accepted. And as Caroline has pointed out, so rightfully, if other international, high quality international students are [00:16:00] spooked by the current H one B talk, now is your chance.

International candidate. Jump in there, shoot your shot like you might be able to get into a school, assuming of course that you’re qualified, but. You might have a lot less competition now than you normally will, so this could be a golden opportunity for you. And one final as one thing that I wanted to point out was that I was thinking, okay, Maria, let’s say that, you just said that maybe there’s gonna be walk back of some of these and there’s gonna be, maybe he’s gonna change.

But even if there isn’t a change, right? Let’s think about this. The companies themselves are gonna have, and you started to alluded to this John, when you mentioned that a lot of them are global concerns. They’re gonna have now a two year window in which to say. Okay. We know that we’re not gonna keep these people in the states, so let’s open a huge office in Vancouver.

Let’s open a brand, an enormous new office in Toronto. Whatever that is. Because I was thinking back to over the summer when it looked like maybe a bunch of international students wouldn’t be able to get any student visa at all. And I know that some of the business schools we’re looking [00:17:00] at, do we rent out some space in Toronto and do Zoom classes?

We do a hybrid. What we did during COVID. I’ve heard that. I think Rice, I was actually having dinner last night with a dear friend who was, say he’s from Texas and he was saying that Rice has some sort of a campus in Paris and that they are leaning really heavily on their global campuses around the world to still be able to service these students who had gotten accepted.

So things like that, like if. Even if our sort of my very cautious and perhaps irrational optimism turns out to not be true, let’s say the things get, the OPT is banished and all, everyone is banished and it’s the worst case scenario. Again, there’s gonna be two and a half years for these companies. To quickly find, okay, fine, we’re gonna open up an office in Mexico City and we’re gonna pay people really well and we’re gonna what?

Whatever that is. ’cause they’re, the companies are still gonna want the talent, right? Just because the political administration doesn’t want the global talent in the country. That doesn’t mean that the country’s employers don’t want that talent. They [00:18:00] want that talent, they want that intellect, they want that energy and that drive to make their companies better and to make more money.

So they have a very strong incentive to not only be lobbying for these. Visa changes to go away, but if they don’t go away, they have a very strong incentive to come up with some way to provide, to provide those incomes and to provide those perks and some sort of a compromise type of situation.

So again I think if you’re applying now, if you’re going in with eyes wide open, shoot your shot. That’s my, I would absolutely tell people to to try that.

John Byrne: Yeah, I totally agree. And, generally this is my rule of thumb and Maria and Caroline, you may or may not agree with this, at the top MBA programs, they’re so selective that the people who apply to them generally are very self-selecting group.

So I always say that roughly 80% of the school’s applicant pool. Is qualified to actually get accepted, get in, do [00:19:00] well, and land a good job. And yet we know that at Stanford, the acceptance rate is 6%, that Harvard is 12 Wharton and Columbia is, a little under 20 or so. So there are a lot of really good candidates who aren’t getting in.

Which leads me to this, if you’re an international student who thinks okay, so these US schools just might dip a little more into the domestic pool to make up for the offset of international candidates. As it turns out, there is a little notice. Clause in the big beautiful tax bill that was passed here under Trump that places severe limits on federal loans for graduate students.

Now, the current grad plus loan program allows students to borrow up to the cost of their graduate programs. That comes to an end in July of next year. After that, grad students borrowing will literally be capped at [00:20:00] 20,500 bucks a year with a lifetime graduate school loan limit of a hundred thousand. That’s a big deal because, at the top MBA programs it’s not on typical.

For a student to borrow over a hundred thousand dollars easily. And so these caps are also going to affect domestic enrollment. So again, that, that contributes to your ability as an international candidate to get in both. The likely decline in competition not only from internationals but also from domestic students here, interestingly enough, that Bill, which passed has different limits for a professional graduate degree, but the bill basically says that only med school and law school qualify as professional degrees and not business school.

That’s another wacky thing that’s happened that will affect. Domestic enrollment as well. So I, I side with Maria and [00:21:00] Caroline to me the advice is, look long term. Don’t be affected overly affected by the change in policies in the US or the climate here. Understand that if you apply now and you matriculate next year and you graduate in two years after that you’re gonna be facing probably a very different environment.

Also understand the odds are in your in your favor, in getting into a highly selective, really good program in this coming year. And know that, while people too often calculate the value of an MBA based on short term variables, like what’s my starting salary gonna be? What is my sign-on bonus?

The truth is the MBA has enduring value over your lifetime. So it rewards you over your entire career and not just for the first or second years. And you can’t go wrong by graduating into a network of helpful and supportive people from a great school and [00:22:00] receiving a great education. So I think bottom line, we’re telling you apply.

Don’t get convinced by your colleagues or anyone else that this is a bad time to come to the us. Opportunity. Some of the best opportunity come comes when people perceive there to be significant challenges. And I think this is really true with business school. We hope we convinced you to come and try and hedge your batts too, as Caroline noted.

I think that’s really super important to have a plan B when you apply and toss a bunch of apps to the European schools which have excellent superb world class MBA programs and real international cohorts. 90% of the students not from the countries where the schools reside. Toss a bunch of them in your mix for your target schools to give you these different options at the end of the day.

This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Thanks for listening.

Maria

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